Sixty high school students from China visited the University of Iowa Tuesday, July 23, as part of a Midwest tour to learn about the culture, conservation, and commerce surrounding the Mississippi River.

Iowa Now caught up with a few of our retiring colleagues to hear a bit about their work, share the excitement of their future plans, and perhaps capture just a bit of that “institutional memory” they are taking with them.

LaMar Grafft, a rural health and safety specialist in the UI College of Public Health, says that cautionary signs on the backs of buggies are important in making them visible to motorists in a story on an Amish teenager who died in an accident.

The UI started using oat hulls from the Quaker Oats processing facility in Cedar Rapids about 10 years ago to fuel its campus power plant, which is significantly cheaper than coal and saves the university about a half-million dollars each year.

Solon High School student Kaitlin Hatcher recently completed a lab internship in the UI’s biology department under the mentorship of Maurine Neiman, assistant biology professor, whom Hatcher credits with making it a successful learning experience.

The University of Iowa awarded an estimated 5,200 degrees at the close of the 2013 spring session.

Thirty-one of the country's and the world’s brightest high school students performed six weeks of hands-on scientific research as part of the University of Iowa's Secondary Student Training Program (SSTP). Students will present their findings in a poster session from 10 a.m. to noon this Friday, July 26.

UI students Jerid Schumacher, Jake Thomas, Taylor Grote, and Levi Maxfield hosted a launch party in April for their online clothing store, Widespread Threads, based in Iowa City. The start-up company gives a T-shirt to a child in need for each one it sells.

The second annual Get Ready Iowa workshop will take place this Wednesday, July 24, in the Lindquist Center Jones Commons on the University of Iowa campus.

UI senior Jolene Luther’s grandfather, William Holcomb, died from Huntington disease (HD) in the fall of 2011, but his impact lives on through the research Luther is doing this summer at the UI.

Daniel Reed, UI's vice president for research and economic development, writes about the global race to build ever-faster supercomputers and the need for radical innovations versus incremental, small steps.

A new, three-year research project at the University of Iowa is focused on helping pilots react and recover when the auto-pilot system in the plane malfunctions.